"The army is always in my mind. Now, talking to you, do you know how many times I've gone back to Lebanon? I'm almost always there," says Majid Rahal, 48, who even 20 years after his release from the army still suffers from flashbacks and has trouble falling asleep at night. When he finally does, he dreams about terrorists penetrating the walls of his home, which causes him to wake up and look under his bed for his bulletproof vest and gun.
"Nights are the scariest," Rahal tells Israel Hayom. "Sometimes I hold onto my wife Amira's shirt and ask her not to leave me. In the day, I suffer panic attacks. I feel like I'm inside a sack, and they're closing it, and I can't breathe. At moments like these, I drip sweat and feel the pulse in my neck. Don't even ask," he says.
For 10 years, Rahal served as a career army tracker with the IDF's 91st Division, and spent most of his service in Lebanese posts. Today, he deals with post-traumatic stress disorder on a daily basis as a result of the difficult events he experienced, incidents in which soldiers were wounded and killed.
"Anyone who wasn't in Lebanon doesn't know the IDF," he says.
As a tracker, Rahal would walk at the head of a troop contingent to break paths for the soldiers. In 1995, while still in the army, he married and was given a week off. But his commanding officer called him back to replace one of the other trackers. When he arrived, Rahal joined the 12th Golani Brigade on a mission on the Shamis al-Arqub ridge, which overlooks Ishaya, a Christian village a few dozen kilometers from Beirut. As they were breaking a path, the forces encountered the enemy, and when they tried to attack, they were targeted by a bomb.
"It was a serious clash. I was wounded by shrapnel in my arm and my leg, but I went on. I needed to walk a long way with 17 other soldiers. The IDF started bombing and we asked the air force for help," he recalls.
At first, Rahal – then a master sergeant – didn't even realize he'd been wounded.
"I felt something cold in my leg, like ants. Only after quite a while, I noticed blood. I told one of the soldiers I'd been hurt, but even then I didn't feel too much. Only later did I realize the shrapnel had penetrated to the bone."
After he was wounded, one of the soldiers with him in the field tied a tourniquet onto Rahal's leg and tried to stabilize him and get him to a helicopter. "When I was in the helicopter, I lost consciousness. I was unconscious in the hospital for three days. Even today, I ask myself how exactly they treated me at that point."
Rahal sustained a bad wound to his leg and his ankle was smashed. He underwent a few failed operations, and doctors were eventually forced to amputate his leg.
"I wanted to run away from the hospital all the time. At first, I didn't dare think about amputation, not until the pain forced me to and I begged the doctors to take it off. After that, my situation really improved. Suddenly, I didn't have to drag a heavy leg [behind me] and not function. I felt relief, but even now, when I have to go to the doctor, my heart rate speeds up," he says.
Today, Rahal lives in the Bedouin town of Zarzir with his wife, Amira, and his four children.
Nearly all of the family's neighbors also served in the IDF. Amira's uncle is the late Col. Hussein al-Haib, who was the first tracker commander in the IDF to reach such a high rank. Rahal's father was killed during his service with the military police, and another 35 members of his extended family also fell serving their country.
Despite the grief, Amira stresses how much she loves the country: "I support the young Bedouin who enlist in the IDF. We have lectures to encourage them to join. Even after the nation-state law, it's important to us to enlist. I send my children to serve the nation with my eyes closed."
In the atmosphere of contribution and willingness to enlist that prevails in Zarzir, Rahal sharing his story is not something to be taken for granted. He speaks for the soldiers who were wounded during their service and must grapple with those wounds, physical and emotional, daily.
Dr. Yael Caspi, who coordinates mental health treatment on behalf of the Defense Ministry at Rambam Health Care Campus; Dr. Ortal Slobidin, and Dr. Shai Sorer – former coordinator for PTSD patients at Haemek Medical Center in Afula on behalf of the Defense Ministry – have conducted a series of studies among hundreds of Bedouin soldiers from northern Israel. They found that the population has great difficulty sharing their problems, which thereby makes it much more difficult for them to cope.
"Most of the Bedouin soldiers come from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and a patriarchal cultural background, in which it isn't acceptable for men to share their troubles and feelings with others," explains Sorer.
"In this community, there is a stigma about mental health problems in general, and especially when it exists in men, who are traditionally expected to demonstrate self-command, courage, and capability.
"When a Bedouin soldier develops mental health problems and PTSD, he had to deal with his injuries on various levels. He loses his job and his solid standing in his family and his community. That situation creates a double injury in which a former soldier is forced to deal with things that are unfamiliar, in unsupportive conditions, all because of the negative, critical stigma by various elements in the society to which he belongs."
Sorer adds that because medication does not do enough to treat PTSD, and therapy requires them to share their difficulty – which is something foreign to the Bedouin population – Bedouin veterans are at high risk for developing chronic PTSD, which worsens with time.
The group Bshvil has identified the problem of dealing with PTSD in IDF veterans as a whole and the Bedouin sector in particular. The group organizes multi-day "release marches" in Israel and other countries, hoping to give veterans the emotional tools with which to process, accept, and confront their war experiences. The group sees it as a moral obligation to help former soldiers be able to live their lives as fully as possible.
Recently, Bshvil organized a special such event for the Bedouin veteran population. Rahal and 12 other Bedouin veterans took part in the 12-day hike abroad, which Amira – who represents the Bedouin sector in the Zahal Disabled Veterans Organization – helped organize.
"On the first day, we sat in a circle, and everyone told his story. Two of the participants served with me. Everything came up and it was really hard. Slowly we get into the process. Everyone came to the hike with his own baggage, and the guys opened up and cried like children.
"I learned that it's possible to get it out, to talk. We learned to create a different kind of internal dialogue, more constructive. It's a feeling of relief to see that there are other people like me, in my situation, who are having a difficult time after being wounded. We cried, we ate, we laughed, always moving forward. For years, I was dragging this weight around with me, feeling like it could explode at any minute. Now, finally, the weight is starting to fall away," Rahal says.
"We became different people and came back with a will to live. Even if the difficulty is still there, after the trip I suddenly saw the sun come out. I would sit and do nothing all day, and all of a sudden I have tools and meaning."
Eyal Bichler, 50, a psychotherapist who co-facilitated the trip, says, "We set out with members of five different tribes, and throughout the trip they opened up and shared the stories of their tribes and stories of the heroism of relatives who fell in battle, people we all knew about, in events and places we all knew as soldiers.
"On the fifth day of the trip, after one of the participants shared something moving about his tough experiences as a senior tracker, we went to the beach and stood there in a line, looking at the horizon. One of the participants led us in a Muslim religious ceremony – all of us, Jews and Muslims – in Arabic and Hebrew. At the end of the prayer, we all went into the water together. Brothers," Bichler says.
Q: We know that it's harder for Bedouin society to talk about trauma. How do you get them to open up and share?
"It happens through the experience of detaching from Israel and their day to day life, being in nature and … of course through patience and open facilitating. The trip is for the facilitators, like it is for the participants, and the more we are willing to make ourselves vulnerable and show trust, the easier it is for them to surrender to the process."
Q: How does the trip contribute to the mental welfare of the participants?
"After we got back, we didn't stop getting responses about changes in their worldviews, about a personal initiative they are taking and the ability to once again become part of their home lives. The warm responses came and are still coming from their wives and families, too."
Amira Rahal has become the guiding spirit behind the close bond that has formed between the trip participants, who continue to meet back in Israel.
"We've become one big family. I don't know how to thank the group that saved Majid for me. That trip showed them that finally there are people who are taking care of them. In my work with the Disabled IDF Veterans group, I hope to heal the injuries inside, as the trips do. There are a lot of wounded, not only physically, but mentally – and this trip is so crucial to their recovery," she says.
